The new Mac Pro 2022 hasn’t attracted quite as much attention as the new MacBook Air 2022 and the expected Apple M2 chip, but in terms of Apple rumours and conjecture, we can at least claim that a powerful new Apple workstation is on the horizon, potentially as soon as June 6, 2022, at WWDC 2022.
This comes, astonishingly, from Apple themselves, with John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, previewing the new workstation at the conclusion of the Apple Peek Performance event back in March.
Speaking of the Mac Studio and Studio Display, Ternus says: “And they join the rest of our incredible Mac lineup with Apple silicon, making our transition nearly complete, with just one more product to go: Mac Pro, but that is for another day.”
MAC PRO 2022: RELEASE DATE
We can’t predict when the Apple Mac Pro 2022 will be introduced, but we expect the new workstation-class desktop to be announced at WWDC 2022 and a presale period to begin shortly after. It’s unclear when the Mac Pro 2022 will be released. According to Majin Bu, a well-known Apple analyst, specific supply chain sources predict a September 2022 ship date (opens in new tab).
This would be similar to what happened with the 2019 Mac Pro, which was introduced in June at WWDC 2019 but didn’t arrive until December 2019.
However, we are aware that it is on its way. During the Apple Peek Performance event, Apple’s Ternus affirmed as much, however he did not provide a release date other than “another day.” Is Monday, June 6, 2022, going to be that day? We sincerely hope so.
MAC PRO 2022: PRICE
We don’t know how much Apple will charge for the new Mac Pro 2022, but we think it will start around $6,000, £6,000, or AU$9,000 and go up from there as you add additional RAM, storage, and (most likely) GPU cores.
Part of the reason it’s hard to figure out how much the Mac Pro costs is that, unlike most other Apple devices, it has a lot more parts than a typical Mac. Most consumer and business Macs have more than one way to set them up. Still, these choices are mostly limited to the processor step (Apple M1 Pro vs. M1 Max in the MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021) and MacBook Pro 16-inch (2021), for example, with different options for GPU core counts in some cases), the amount of RAM, and the amount of storage.
The Mac Pro 2019 had a much longer list of configuration options, ranging from an 8-core Intel Xeon to a 24-core Intel processor, 32GB up to an incredible 1.5TB of DDR4 ECC memory, and ten different options for AMD Radeon graphics cards, from a Radeon Pro W5500X with 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM to two Radeon Pro W6900X graphics cards with 32GB of GDDR6 VRAM each.
The six storage options range from an SSD with 512GB of space to an SSD with 8TB. You can also install an Apple Afterburner card, which costs $2,000/£2,000, to speed up the decoding of ProRes and ProRes RAW video codecs in supported apps like Final Cut X. Read more; Apple may release the M1X-powered MacBook Pro this month
All of this means that the cheapest Mac Pro 2019 model will cost you $5,999/£5,499/AU$9,999, while the most expensive configuration will set you back an eye-popping $53,799/£53,299/AU$81,699. No matter how much money your startup or studio has from venture capital, that is a lot of money. And that doesn’t even count the monitors and other devices that are needed to use the workstation.
MAC PRO 2022: SPECS AND PERFORMANCE
Thanks to the M1 Ultra, the new Apple Mac Pro 2022 is likely to be a powerful workstation. And since Apple used interconnect technology to make the M1 Ultra, it’s possible, maybe even likely, that the Mac Pro 2022 (at least for high-end configurations) will be powered by two M1 Ultra chips that work together, not in parallel or tandem like many other multiprocessor systems.
This could be a very powerful workstation, but how will it compare to the 2019 Mac Pro? That’s still up in the air. That workstation’s Intel Xeon W processor could handle up to 1,536GB of DDR4 RAM, which is very important for creative content workflows. Read Also; Apple is planning a foldable MacBook for 2026
If the rumour that the Mac Pro will have two M1 Ultras joined together is true, like how the M1 Ultra is made up of two M1 Max chips connected by an interconnect bridge, the Mac Pro in 2022 might only be able to handle 256GB of unified memory.
Only? Did we say “only 256GB”? We must be getting spoiled.
Still, if the Mac Pro has two M1 Ultras that are connected, the Mac Pro 2022’s memory bandwidth could make up for the fact that it has less physical memory than its predecessor.
If we assume that the Mac Pro’s double-Ultra processor will have a 2×48-core CPU and a 2×64-core GPU, the new Mac Pro 2022 will have a 40-core CPU, a 96- to 128-core GPU, and a 64-core neural engine.
We’re not even sure how to measure that kind of potential yet, but it makes us more excited than ever to see what Apple has in store.
